No. It's now the language of liberation

When Iqbal wrote Hindi hain ham vatan hai Hindostan hamara, Hindi had an entirely different connotation. Hindi, in colonial India, did not evoke any specific language, race or religion. Hindavi was a zubaan of ordinary people who formed the second largest linguistic community on earth. But how Hindi was transformed into a raaj-bhasha (language of the state) and rashtra-bhasha (national language) and associated with a distinct religious community dominated by a couple of Hindu castes, is not that cryptic a process.

In 2007, I was invited to be part of the government delegation in the Vishva Hindi Sammelan (VHS) at New York. Millions were spent to project Hindi as a Vishva Bhasha (world language). A demand was raised that the UN should accept Hindi as its working language like English, French etc.

The same evening, asking for another delegate, a Mr Pandey, at a hotel, the receptionist started laughing, and asked for the gentleman���s first name as there were more than a dozen Pandeys staying there!

I realised that more than 85% of the participants and about 98% of the apex body of the organisers of VHS belonged to one Hindu caste and its sub-castes. That was the fact about this world language!

When in school, I too took part in blackening English hoardings and signs after Dr Lohiya raised the slogan of Angrezi Hatao, now, when Mulayam raises it, I stand against it. There might have been reasons before independence for politicians to support Hindi as a common unifying language in a multi-linguistic and multi-cultural subcontinent to consolidate their struggle against the British.

English, then, would have logically been perceived as the language of colonial rulers. But now, the situation has entirely changed. Hindi is now the language of sarkar, bazar and sanchar (government, market and media) and it has been monopolised by the dominant caste and religious group.

Official Hindi has become a vehicle of obscurantism, communalism, blind nationalism and, to top it all, casteism. English, in post-colonial India, has become a language of modernity and empowerment.

Poor and low caste people and minorities know that Hindi will make them naukar and English will escort them to the seat of the master. If you ask me to give a slogan now, it would be angrezi laao, desh bachao.